At the present time certain other unrelated compounds are in experimental clinical use as radiosensitizers. However, these compounds--for example mitronidazole and misonidazol--suffer from the drawback that they also cause neurotoxicity which limits their usefulness.
It is an object of the present invention to prepare new substituted pyrazines which are highly effective in sensitizing hypoxic tumor cells to the therapeutic effect of radiation treatment but which do not cause neurotoxic effects in the patient being treated.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a process for the preparation of such novel pyrazine compounds.
It is a still further object to provide pharmaceutical compositions of such compounds containing the novel pyrazine compounds and a non-toxic pharmaceutically acceptable carrier.